Hike messenger, a popular phone messaging service app in India, has recently decided to introduce payment services on its platform.

The payment service includes both peer to peer payments that do not require bank accounts and use in-app wallets, and bank to bank payments using the UPI platform introduced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). In doing this, Hike has emulated the services provided by WeChat, a Chinese messaging app owned by Tencent. The latter is also an investor in Hike. Such payments cater to both ad hoc requirements between app users, and special occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries on which people often send cash if they are not able to give a present.

IBM has announced a blockchain technology that will be used by seven European banks, to facilitate international trade for small and medium-size enterprises.

Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Societe Generale and Unicredit are part of the consortium.

IBM is building this new blockchain, Digital Trade Chain, to help parties track, manage and transact internationally. The tech solution will be built on Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain framework, and will go live by the end of the year.

Wiebe Draijer, chairman of the executive board at Rabobank, explains that when a merchant sells goods to another party and those goods arrive, the blockchain triggers a payment to take place. The aim is to move the payment into that blockchain solution, when the payment in blockchain is ready to be robust for large-scale application.

“In a statement announcing the biometric smart card, OT-Morpho emphasized its use for everyday EMV payments…”

OT-Morpho has officially announced its biometric payment card solution at this week’s Money20/20 Europe expo.

Money20/20 Europe: OT-Morpho Unveils Biometric Payment CardThe card features NFC technology for contactless payments, and is EMV compliant. Of course, the standout feature is its embedded fingerprint sensor, with the card using OT-Morpho-developed algorithms to confirm the cardholder’s identity, and biometric data stored securely on the card.

In a statement announcing the biometric smart card, OT-Morpho emphasized its use for everyday EMV payments, but also noted that could be used to “help governments distribute social benefits, knowing that they reach no one else than the eligible (proof of life) citizen.”

The company did not mention the source of the card’s fingerprint sensors, but it’s worth noting that Mastercard’s trials of biometric payment cards earlier this year used a fingerprint sensor provided by IDEX together with technology supplied by Safran Identity & Security, which has since merged with Oberthur Technologies to form OT-Morpho.